


Expert Kissers

by finx



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Pre-Canon, Succubi & Incubi, no no not the way you're thinking, this happens back when Nat and Clint are SHIELD agents doing their SHIELD agent thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:27:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: In Which Clint gets shot and Natasha has an existential crisis





	1. Chapter 1

She found out on a mission. Sometimes it seemed like all their dirtiest secrets came out when they were near dying, jagged in their exposure like bones jutting out of red flesh. Maybe they’d never trust each other enough to give their secrets freely. Maybe by the time they did all their secrets would be spent.

This secret bled out when Clint had a hole in his right arm and several second-degree burns, and Natasha had a broken leg and a concussion so bad she could barely see. They were cornered in a dead-end alley, tucked behind a dumpster, with three men firing at them from the street and a single bullet left between them. Clint had half-carried Natasha there while she fought to keep conscious and propped her up against the wall like a rag doll. Now she tilted her head up, trying to blink away the stars clouding her vision. The building opposite her was dirty brick, no fire escape or convenient windows but old enough that the wall was dotted with crumbled or missing bricks.

“You can climb out,” she rasped. Her throat was still sore from all the smoke she’d inhaled getting Clint out of the embassy. “Even with your arm – go up close to the corner there and you can make it in… two minutes. Maybe four.”

Clint barely glanced at the wall – he was peering down the alley through a hand mirror, trying to find some way to stop three men with one bullet. “I’d get shot down in one.”

Natasha made a face. He was right. She tried to think through the clanging agony in her skull. “How many explosive arrows are left?” Clint couldn’t fire them, not with one dead arm, but he wasn’t the only one who knew how to shoot a pointy stick at people. “I can buy you some time.”

“How are you going to hang on to me with a broken leg and your arms busy?” Clint said, almost absently. The shooting had stopped, which meant the gunmen would be coming down the alley soon. “Don’t think I could make it up fast enough carrying both of us anyway, not with one arm.”

Natasha sighed. Clint was missing the point. “Not both of us,” she said hoarsely.

Clint turned around to glare at her. Natasha knew from the stubborn set of his jaw he was going to argue, and there wasn’t time. “Come back for me,” she said before he could speak. It came out weaker than she’d meant it to, ragged from exhaustion. “Leave now so you can come back for me.”

“Come back for your corpse, you mean.” The gunmen didn’t belong to the embassy they’d broken into, but to one of the guests, an arms dealer who didn’t like loose ends. They wouldn’t bother bringing her in for an interrogation.

 _I’ll be fine._ Natasha pulled her face into the right shape for the lie, but found she couldn’t get the words out through the pain bouncing around her skull. Sentiment, maybe. The tiny part of her that still believed in poetry didn’t want the last words she ever said to Clint to be a lie.

There was a reason Natasha didn’t listen to that part of herself. She tried to line up the right words to say to make Clint go, but she’d taken too long. Clint met her eyes, clenched his jaw, frowned a little, and – she knew that look. That was the jumping-off-a-cliff look.

Clint asked, “Do you trust me?”

Natasha’s lips quirked up in a wry, sad smile before she could catch herself. He hadn’t asked her that question in years – she thought he knew better by now. Clint didn’t press the point. He nodded brusquely, turned to fire their last remaining bullet down the alley at the gunmen who were surely approaching by now, then crouched down and kissed her.

Natasha froze. She and Clint had kissed before, of course, to divert attention or maintain a cover and once to win a bet, but never like this. Never so fiercely, his lips insistent and warm against hers, his hand coming up to cradle her face. Natasha’s lips parted without any conscious input from her, giving in to Clint as thoughtless as breathing.

That should have been the first warning – she never kissed thoughtlessly. Clint’s tongue swiped into her mouth, hot and wet, and the warmth of it seemed to spread through her until she was flushed all the way to her toes. The pain of her broken leg and the concussion faded away, replaced by a heady buzz of pleasure. Her hand was in Clint’s hair, somehow, her tongue entwined with his, her tired body arching up to meet his.

Clint broke the kiss abruptly. The shock of his sudden absence left her cold and strangely bereft. The pounding in her skull increased sevenfold, like her head was being squeezed in a clamp. Natasha gasped under the sudden onslaught of pain. Her stomach revolted, clenching and heaving with nausea. Natasha fought against the bile climbing up her throat.

She didn’t notice Clint picking up his bow and firing three arrows down the alley – she was too busy trying not to puke. She didn’t feel his hand on her shoulder, either, or hear him say, “Time to go.” When Clint tried to pull her to her feet, Natasha finally gave in to the pain and blacked out.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha woke in the back seat of a moving car. Everything ached. Her leg was splinted and her head still felt like it was on fire. She lay there a few minutes, feeling the dull vibration of the motor thrumming through her. Her memory seeped back in patches – the embassy, the fire, the gunmen, the alley. The kiss.

Natasha’s gut clenched. The kiss. Something had been very, very wrong about that kiss.

She sat up slowly, gingerly. Clint’s eyes found hers in the rear view mirror, just a quick glance to confirm she was upright before going back to the road. Natasha watched his face in the mirror for tells. He was worried, and hiding it; a little guilty, and a little afraid.

Natasha’s throat was dry and smoke-stained. She took a few moments to work up some saliva before saying, “That was some kiss.”

Clint didn’t react. Natasha thought about reminding him that people who kissed her uninvited walked away bloody, but it was an idle thought. He knew that already.

“Explain.” She didn’t bother to make the word commanding, or threatening – she didn’t need to, not with Clint. He met her eyes again in the mirror. He didn’t flinch, but the tic in his jaw said just as much.

She waited. Finally Clint said, “Do you remember in February, when I broke my wrist?”

Natasha nodded, the barest tilt of her head so as not to aggravate the violent headache still hammering away behind her eyes. In February they’d been in southwest China. Clint had jumped out a window, predictably, only this time he’d gotten shot halfway down and ended up landing on his wrist.

“Remember how I was fine a month later?”

Natasha’s gaze fell to Clint’s hand on the steering wheel, suddenly registering what was off about the image. He was driving with his right hand; the bullet hole that had deadened his arm was just… gone. Dried blood was caked on his arm under his torn shirt, but the skin itself was smooth and whole. Clint noticed her noticing and gave her a humorless smile through the mirror. 

“How?” Natasha demanded.

Clint took a deep breath, huffed it out unhappily. “I’m… well, the best word for it kind of gives the wrong impression.” He sighed. “I’m an incubus.”

Natasha stared. She watched his face, scanning it for tells, but he wasn’t lying. He kept glancing at her, trying to gauge her reaction. 

“I’m not a demon,” Clint blurted suddenly, tripping over the syllables like he couldn’t get them out fast enough. “I’m human, just… a little different. I can use other people’s… energy, if I have to, to fix myself up or get stronger. That’s what I did to you. Sorry. You’ve probably got a killer headache going on, on top of whatever you had before.”

Natasha’s headache flared up, like a puppy that wags its tail when you call its name. She winced at the pain of it, and Clint looked hurriedly away, back at the road in front of them.

Clint didn’t say anything else. Natasha waited, wondering what she was supposed to feel. After a while she lay down again and let the pain in her head and leg lull her to sleep.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha slept until Clint pulled up at a tiny bed and breakfast some time after sunset. It had started to rain, the kind of steady drizzle that seeps into your clothes and sticks to your hair like dewdrops. Natasha was awake enough to protest when Clint half-carried her across the gravel parking lot, but not awake enough to brave the stairs to their room alone. She leaned on Clint and took the steps one at a time. She was far more spent than a broken leg and a concussion should warrant, even factoring in the smoke inhalation. 

She didn’t flinch away from Clint at the thought, but she did feel cold.

There were two beds. Clint helped her over to the far one and then vanished into the bathroom without a word. He came out with a towel a moment later. “You should dry off,” he said quietly. “Don’t want to catch a cold.”

Natasha rubbed feebly at her hair and started to strip off her wet shirt. Clint looked away, more modest than he’d been with her in years, and vanished into the bathroom without another word. Natasha kept her pants on rather than disturbing the splint on her leg, but took off her bra and slipped under the covers. By the time Clint came out of the bathroom, wearing a towel round his waist and nothing else, she was almost asleep.

Clint padded softly to the cabinet for a blanket, which he spread out over Natasha, then crouched down by his bed where he’d dumped his gear. He picked up something from the pile and put it on the bedside table between them, but Natasha was too far gone to open her eyes and see what it was.

The room was dark when she woke again. The rain outside had stopped, and there was a faint white glow coming in through the window and casting the shadows of blinds on the far wall. Natasha entertained herself for a few minutes trying to determine if it was moonlight or a particularly weak street lamp.

Clint’s bed hadn’t been slept in. Natasha’s eye fell on the bedside table, and she squinted to see what was on it – a knife, and his hearing aids. He’d left her a knife, smaller and therefore easier to conceal than any of the ones she was currently wearing, and he’d let her know he was vulnerable. Natasha snorted softly. Clint was such a sap.

She played with the knife a bit before putting it under her pillow. She was still tired, but she’d done enough sleeping, it seemed. She watched the silhouettes of the blinds on the far wall and let her thoughts circle back to the kiss.

Natasha was an expert on kisses. Kissing was a science to her, an art – she knew more about kissing than Tony Stark did about fast cars and hangovers. And that kiss with Clint… well, by all standards, it had been subpar. Verging on bad. Rushed, dry, rough and not in the good way, tasting of smoke and stale Chinese food. Not quite all the way to horrible but in general not a good kiss.

And yet she had melted. She, Natasha Romanoff, Natalia Romanova, had gone limp and warm and silly. If Clint had asked she’d have kissed him all day. The gunmen from the embassy could have shot them both point-blank and she wouldn’t have spared them a glance.

Natasha watched the shadows on the opposite wall and fingered the knife under her pillow. So Clint could undo her with a kiss. That was… well, if she was being honest, that was absolutely terrifying. Natasha was well aware she had what most people would consider an unhealthy relationship with sex. Sex was a weapon, was her weapon. It hadn’t been successfully wielded against her since the Red Room, when they’d been inoculating her against its effects. She was supposed to be immune.

Natasha tucked the knife into the pocket of her jeans and slipped out of bed. 

Clint would have chosen a perch with clear sightlines to the road. Natasha swung herself out the window and climbed up to the roof. Clint was a gargoyle in the shadow of a gabled window, nothing but a turtleneck guarding him from the slight chill in the damp night air. Natasha padded up behind him, ignoring the goosebumps – she’d kept her shirt off, to make a point. Clint jumped when she dropped into a crouch next to him, grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss.

It was an excellent kiss. Unlike some people, Natasha was a professional. She teased at Clint’s lips, made full use of her tongue, pushed into him with languid intensity. She twined her fingers in his hair and pressed her body against his, ignoring the scratch of his sweater against her skin, knowing he’d feel the curves of her breasts smushed into his chest. She kept at it until Clint groaned, helpless and involuntary, and started pushing back into the kiss. _Two can play at this game,_ she thought smugly. Then she pulled away, and Clint followed after her with the slightest whimper of disappointment. 

Natasha sat back, satisfied, and regarded her work. Clint’s eyes were wide and dark from surprise and arousal; his lips were swollen. He was dazed, expression glazed over, mouth open and breathing fast. Natasha watched as he struggled to regain his focus, gaze flicking down to her mouth and to her breasts before settling back on her face.

“I know,” he said at last, too quiet. She could barely hear him, even in the utter stillness of the night. “That’s why I shouldn’t have—” He looked away, mouth twisting down. “After everything you’ve been through—I didn’t think about, about what it would mean to you…”

Natasha sighed. It was too dark for sign language, and she hadn’t brought the hearing aids. She put a finger under Clint’s chin and tilted his head up, forcing him to look at her. With her other hand she held up the knife he’d left her. To his credit he didn’t spare it more than a glance, just watched her face, waiting.

She flipped the knife until she was holding it by the blade and handed it to him hilt-first. He looked down at it. Bit his lip, dipped his head a fraction. His fingers trembled as they closed over the hilt. Natasha gripped the blade a moment longer, both their hands wrapped around a weapon pointed at her chest, and held Clint’s eyes with her own to make sure he got the message.

He smiled, shaky and small, and tucked the knife away before leaning forward and pulling Natasha into a fierce hug.

 


End file.
